What Are Your Tastes? chapter 25

Why Are You Here

“Teacher Lu,” Tao Jin finally spoke slowly, “I don’t know what happened. Just now… I just wanted to be accepted, so I wouldn’t feel so… different. I don’t want to be always excluded.”

“Because of your orientation?”

The loud music in the bar or the silence from the person next to him made Lu Yunchu wait a long time for a response. Just as he was about to speak again, Tao Jin heavily uttered a single word, “Yes.”

Lu Yunchu asked the bartender for two glasses of water and drank half of one in a single gulp. “I used to come here too.”

“Teacher Lu, are you—”

“Yes, why else would I be here?”

The surrounding noise seemed to fade, and the booth they were in became relatively quiet.

“It was about seven or eight years ago, maybe I stayed for less than ten minutes,” Lu Yunchu glanced at him, “you won’t find the sense of belonging you seek here.”

Tao Jin’s body seemed to tremble again, his voice choked with sobs: “I didn’t truly want to… but I don’t understand, what did I do wrong…”

“Who said you are doing anything wrong?” Lu Yunchu asked, guessing, “Your parents?”

He neither nodded nor shook his head: “Not just them, also him—”

In Tao Jin’s class, there was a close friend who always took care of him. That friend was a straight man, but Tao Jin couldn’t help letting their friendship turn into something more, and not long ago, his secret was discovered.

“I can’t forget it, he looked at me like I was a lunatic, he said I was abnormal, that something is wrong with me, and our relationship completely ended…

For him, I even came out to my parents, and they don’t understand why.”

Lu Yunchu finally understood where the heaviness on Tao Jin came from: “Do your parents’ divorce have anything to do with you?”

“Not entirely,” he seemed to find a release, speaking non-stop, “their relationship was already bad, and because of my situation, they blamed each other more. Teacher Lu, you know ,I’ve been wishing for their divorce for a long time.”

Tao Jin’s words reminded Lu Yunchu of a distant memory. When he was in kindergarten, the teacher asked everyone to make wish cards and put them on the backboard in the classroom.

Most of the kids wrote wishes like “I want to be a scientist in the future,” “I hope mom buys me a doll,” “I wish grandma’s illness gets better,” all warm and heartfelt wishes. Only Lu Yunchu wrote on his carefully colored card, “I want to run away with my mom.” In the end, he didn’t turn in the card, no matter how the teacher asked, he insisted he lost it.

“My dad said I was a gloomy child since I was young, not cute at all, he never knew what I was thinking…” Tao Jin continued, “Yes, I’m not cute, not lovable, I once wanted to become cheerful for someone, but now he doesn’t talk to me anymore, and I don’t want to go home even more…”

Besides having loved a straight man, many of Tao Jin’s experiences were ones Lu Yunchu had also gone through. Because he had experienced them, he knew that outside intervention could often backfire. He didn’t stop him, nor did he judge, just waited for Tao Jin to finish saying what he needed to say.

“Feeling better?” Lu Yunchu asked again when he paused.

“Yeah,” he turned his head, “Teacher Lu, have you ever felt very tired?”

“I used to,” tired because of being different from ordinary people, unable to seek acceptance from those close to you, but once you stop placing your hopes on others, those invisible shackles imprisoning you will naturally disappear, “now I want to live for myself.”

He glanced at him lightly: “If you can’t figure it out, then don’t think about it for now. I can’t give you any guidance, there’s no fixed answer to these things.”

“I know, I feel much better, thank you,” he slowly stood up, “Teacher Lu, let’s go.”

The city lights illuminated the dark night in colorful hues, filling it with endless noise. After eight o’clock, the number of pedestrians and vehicles on the street had not decreased at all.

As they pushed open the door, a strange man followed them in: “Interested in having some fun together, you two young men?”

This man looked more menacing than the first one they encountered, with a scar on his temple. Tao Jin instinctively took a step back.

“No need,” Lu Yunchu didn’t want to confront him directly, “we’re leaving.”

“Come on—” he put his hand on Lu Yunchu’s shoulder from behind, “I saw you inside, didn’t have much to drink, did you? It’s still early, how about a couple more drinks?”

Lu Yunchu quietly moved his steps away, pulling Tao Jin with him, when suddenly someone called out: “Lu Yunchu!”

He looked around, searching for the source of the voice.

Zhou Yanchuan stood a few meters away, quickly approaching them. He had seen Tao Jin before, but not the scar-faced man.

The scarred man seemed drunk, his face red, and he rudely asked, “Do you know each other?”

“Of course,” Zhou Yanchuan suspected the man was trouble, “who are you?”

“We don’t know him,” Lu Yunchu immediately said to Zhou Yanchuan, “let’s leave.”

Zhou Yanchuan glanced at the neon sign of the bar behind them, suppressed his doubts, and nodded.

The strange man still hadn’t looked away, but after Zhou Yanchuan snapped, “What are you looking at?” he reluctantly turned around.

Anyone who had lived in Sen City for a while knew what “Charm” was. Zhou Yanchuan was no exception.

Seeing Lu Yunchu and Tao Jin walk out of there was quite a surprise. But the entrance of the bar was not a good place to talk, with many strange people watching them, so he followed Lu Yunchu’s suggestion to leave first.

“Why are you here?” Lu Yunchu asked first before Zhou Yanchuan could speak.

“Having dinner with someone at Baihe.”

As soon as he said that, Zhou Yanchuan noticed Tao Jin suddenly stopped, his eyes staring in panic at something ahead. He followed his gaze.

The cause of Tao Jin’s change in expression was a middle-aged woman with an angry face walking towards them.

Sure enough, she stopped in front of Tao Jin, glared at him fiercely, then looked over Zhou Yanchuan and Lu Yunchu before returning her gaze to Tao Jin, pointing at the two and demanding: “Which one of them is your man?”

Both Zhou Yanchuan and Lu Yunchu were taken aback.